January 2013

Tracking

September 05, 2008

Who should pay for the environmental impact of farming?

Yesterday I pondered the definition of farming?? I am still
unsure whether we will need to change the definition into the future especially
if we accept that in their everyday practices farmers deliver environmental
benefits to the public good. Would those benefits be there if the farmer no
longer managed the land? Some benefits maybe but not all, so it could be argued
that farming delivers both positive and potentially negative environmental
impacts. If the farmer delivers positive environmental benefits and if food
production has a negative impact on the environment how should that be paid for
in the global supply chain?

The easiest way would be to put an environmental tax on food
and the people driving the impact would pay for it. The more food you buy the
more environmental tax you pay as you are using more global natural resources
and you are producing more environmental impact. Would any politician propose
this? Probably not and how would this tax be effectively and transparently
distributed to address environmental issues without being lost in a myriad of
bureaucratic layers?

In the EC we can, and we are developing other mechanisms –
providing payments to farmers to offset the costs they incur when producing
food that are not paid for at the point of consumption. We also pay farmers for
delivering environmental benefits for which they would not otherwise (through
the market) receive adequate recompense. This however does not address the
impact of human demand for food on the environment; we assume that as numbers
rise and demand rises we will keep in step with our provision of food. This is
not a sound assumption as many of the resources that we use soil, water, energy
are finite. We can look for a myriad of measures but ultimately they make the cause and effect sums much too
complicated.